named Simon
Freire de Lima with instructions to pay the amount into the treasury at
Madrid; the agent became bankrupt and absconded, leaving Cervantes
responsible for the deficit. By some means the money was raised, and the
debt was liquidated on the 21st of January 1597. But Cervantes' position
was shaken, and his unbusinesslike habits lent themselves to
misinterpretation. On the 6th of September 1597 he was ordered to find
sureties that he would present himself at Madrid within twenty days, and
there submit to the exchequer vouchers for all official moneys collected
by him in Granada and elsewhere. No such sureties being available, he
was committed to Seville jail, but was released on the 1st of December
on condition that he complied with the original order of the court
within thirty days. He was apparently unable to find bail, was dismissed
from the public service, and sank into extreme poverty. During a
momentary absence from Seville in February 1590, he was again summoned
to Madrid by the treasury, but does not appear to have obeyed: it is
only too likely that he had not the money to pay for the journey. There
is some reason to think that he was imprisoned at Seville in 1602, but
nothing positive is known of his existence between 1600 and the 8th of
February 1603: at the latter date he seems to have been at Valladolid,
to which city Philip III. had removed the court in 1601.

Since the publication of the _Galatea_ in 1585 Cervantes' contributions
to literature had been limited to occasional poems. In 1591 he published
a ballad in Andres de Villalta's _Flor de varios y nuevos romances_; in
1595 he composed a poem, already mentioned, to celebrate the
canonization of St Hyacinth; in 1596 he wrote a sonnet ridiculing Medina
Sidonia's tardy entry into Cadiz after the English invaders had retired,
and in the same year his sonnet lauding Santa Cruz was printed in
Cristobal. Mosquera de Figueroa's _Comentario en breve compendio de
disciplina militar_; to 1597 is assigned a sonnet (the authenticity of
which is disputed) commemorative of the poet Herrera; in 1598 he wrote
two sonnets and a copy of _quintillas_ on the death of Philip II.; and
in 1602 a complimentary sonnet from his pen appeared in the second
edition of Lope de Vega's _Dragontea_. Curiously enough, it is by Lope
de Vega that _Don Quixote_ is first mentioned. Writing to an unknown
correspondent (apparently a physician) on the 14th of August 1604, Lope
de Vega s